Local Learning: Poetry and Sense of Place

Family Photos Writing Exercise | Visualization and Sense of Place Exercise

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Here we share ideas for writing individual and group poetry about place, the theme of the Summer 2000 Louisiana Voices Institute. Poetic elements such as repetition, rhyme, alliteration, and phrasing bring a place to life. These activities are adaptable for any age group.

In the book Beyond Heroes and Holidays, English teacher Linda Christensen* describes a writing project using George Ella Lyon's poem "Where I'm From" to encourage her high school students to probe for details of their own sense of place and to write using specifics. Christensen finds that by inviting students to write about the worlds they come from, the class builds community and the work prefigures a world where students can hear the diverse "home languages" of one another. Try this activity about place, and if students would like to share poetry about where they're from, email poems to cartsnetwork@citylore.org.

*Christensen, Linda. "Where I'm From: Inviting Student Lives Into the Classroom." Beyond Heroes and Holidays: A Practical Guide to K-12 Anti-Racist, Multicultural Education and Staff Development. Edited by Enid Lee, Deborah Menkart, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Washington, DC: Network of Educators on the Americas, 1998, pp. 391-394, adapted with permission.

Objectives
To encourage students to explore their own sense of place, to probe for the details of this place, and to write using details.

Lesson

I. Prewriting Activity
Read "Where I'm From," by George Ella Lyon, aloud as a class. Discuss Lyon's level of detail and then ask students to brainstorm lists of details, matching hers, and share them out loud, sparking memories and ideas. As students share, encourage them to make their lists "sound like home." "Out of the chaos, the sounds, smells, and languages of my students' homes emerge in poetry," Christensen writes. Categories can include the following:

Items found around the house
Items found in the yard
Items found in the neighborhood
Names of relatives
Sayings
Names of foods
Names of places where they keep childhood memories

II. Drafting
After students have lists of specific words, phrases, and names, ask them to start writing a poem using a phrase like "I am from.…" This phrase will begin the poem and could later link lines of different poems together to form a group poem. Encourage students to end their poems with lines tying their present to their past.

III. "Reading Around"
Elicit feedback by asking students to sit in a circle and read their draft poems. Have listeners write the names of writers on a piece of paper and record specific comments as they read their drafts aloud. For example, does the writer use lists, a metaphor, humor, dialogue, exaggeration? What words or phrases make a piece work well? After reading, the writer calls on classmates for comments and directs discussion.

IV. Revise and publish.

V. Extensions
As a class or in groups, read the group poem "Louisiana Voices" aloud. Can students distinguish between the three regions that teachers wrote about: North, Central, and South Louisiana? As a class, compare the sense of place expressed in this poem with students' own sense of place poems. They can make Venn diagrams to help their analysis. What elements such as sayings, family names, or food do students share with the Louisiana teachers? What elements differ? Ask students to choose a favorite line in the poem and describe why they like it.

Group Poem as a Culminating Activity

Culminating activities are an important way to bring together participants' experiences and work throughout a teacher institute or a unit of intensive study with students. Adapt this activity by asking students to combine lines of their individual sense of place poems to create a group poem.

Sample Lesson from Louisiana Voices Institute

At the Summer 2000 Louisiana Voices Institute, faculty and teachers collaborated to develop a culminating activity that would draw upon all the work we did together and allow each participant to present to the whole group a finished piece of writing or artwork. Using our theme, Sense of Place, faculty members Paddy Bowman and George Zavala and participating educator Sandy LaBry came up with a structure for the event. Participants would each write verses to a group poem about where they were from to introduce a culminating performance. Individual presentations of finished work would follow. Sandy, a poet and English, Speech, and Foreign Language Supervisor for Lafayette Parish, developed instructions for a group poem based on George Ella Lyon's "Where I'm From," and she edited the final product. George Zavala helped the teachers produce the performance.

On the final day of the institute, an audience of faculty, staff, and invited guests sat in a large room of the Alumni House at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. Teachers filed in and stood on the grand staircase in groups corresponding to where they live in the state: North, Central, or South Louisiana. They opened the performance with their group poem, "Louisiana Voices," and then each shared a piece of writing or artwork developed during the institute. They concluded by reciting the last stanza of the poem together, then walking to place their work in a group installation around a fireplace. All agreed that this was a moving, appropriate way to end the week together.

Objective
To write and perform a poem collectively, for many voices, that expresses a personal sense of place and experience while relating to a larger folk group (such as region in this case). Use the work as a culminating activity.

I. Prewriting Activity

Read "Where I'm From," by George Ella Lyon of Kentucky. Unpack the poem to see what the author has put into it:

Categories of experiences
People
Sensory details (smells, tastes, textures, sounds, sights)
Poetic elements (repetition, rhythm, alliteration, phrasing, etc.)

Examine your own prewriting exercises from the week (lists of connections to your folk culture, maps of your own sense of place, fieldwork interview notes, etc.) and your writing drafts (memories of place, family photos, etc.). Select one or more lines or phrases that stand out to you in your prewriting and writing samples.

II. Writing
From your selection, write a sentence or two in the style of George Ella Lyon that incorporates your own experience, your sense of place, and/or belonging to a folk group. If it's a sentence, insert line breaks where you feel some tension in meaning or where you can end on a beat. Write as many of these as you care to. Play with them until you feel they are finished. Then select one to submit for the collective poem.

To your submission, add your name and the part of Louisiana with which you identify (North, South, Central). This will help the editor arrange submissions into a single poem that will become a performance piece, a poem for many voices.

III. Editing
An individual editor or an editing team collects submissions from each participant and arranges them for performance.

IV. Presenting
As a group, decide how to present the collective poem. People may take the lines of another person, for example, the group may recite together, or people may add music. Invite others to witness your performance. Read the poem the Louisiana Voices participants wrote.